Fresh Air - Eugene Levy Is A 'Reluctant Traveler'

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Schitt's Creek star Eugene Levy visits distant lands and tastes exotic foods as the host of the Apple TV+ series The Reluctant Traveler. Levy describes it as a show about "a guy traveling who doesn't love to travel."Also, book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Adelle Waldman's new novel, Help Wanted, and David Bianculli reviews a TV show about the Lincoln assassination called Manhunt.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. My guest today, Eugene Levy, has appeared in more than 60 films and a host of television shows. He's known for his deadpan humor, thick eyebrows, and countless characters he's developed over the years, many doing sketch comedy and improv for SCTV. Levy and both his children starred in the hit comedy series Schitt's Creek, that's S-C-H-I-T-T-S, Creek, it's a name, about a wealthy family who lose their fortune and have to live in a run-down motel in a small town. Levy appeared in and co-wrote the Christopher Guest satirical film's best-in-show,

Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration. His latest project is a travel show on Apple TV Plus titled The Reluctant Traveler. Like other travel shows, it has beautiful shots of exotic places, delicious food, and exhilarating experiences. But it's a little different from programs hosted by seasoned travelers who always relish their adventures. Here's some of the introduction to Levy's shows from season one. I don't look forward to traveling for a number of reasons. When it's too cold, I'm not comfortable. Ice swimming naked. Yes. Well, that's a terrific invitation. When it's too warm, guess what? I'm not comfortable. I can't move that fast.

But I'm 75. You need some help? No, I got it. And maybe it's time to expand my horizons. Expanding his horizons. The second season of The Reluctant Traveler premiered last Friday, March 8th, on Apple TV+. Eugene Levy, welcome back to Fresh Air. Fun to be here. How are you, Dave?

Good, good. Thank you. You know, as I understand it, when you were first approached about doing this travel show, you said, I'm really not your guy, but they still wanted to talk. Is this right? What happened? Yeah, well, they approached me about a travel show. It wasn't this travel show. It was a travel show about It wasn't this travel show. It was a travel show about luxury hotels around the world, and it was called Room with a View. And they were coming to me to host it, and I couldn't understand why because I'd never really done anything like this before.

I'd never really performed on cameras myself, and I wasn't really crazy about traveling. So I said, I think they have the wrong person. And, you know, then one phone call led to another. They wanted to keep talking. And then I explained to them exactly why I was not the person for the show and everything I was saying, they kind of found very funny. And then they called back again saying, you know what? We figured out what this show is. It's about a guy traveling who doesn't love to travel. That should be the show. And I said, well, that kind of makes sense to me. You know, I can see myself being myself on camera for this. You know, I mean, the show, it has all these beauty shots of these amazing places you visit, but the narrative, I guess you could call it, kind of rests on you

working without a script and reacting to people and the experience, kind of like an endless improv. And it's pretty funny. I mean, was it exhausting to do that? Well, it was initially, it was kind of taxing for me because I'd never done anything like that before. I'd never been on camera as myself. And, you know, I don't have a gregarious personality, so I don't really initiate a lot of conversation with people in I kind of, you know, really kind of grew into it a lot quicker than I thought I would. Were there any things they asked you to do that you just took a pass on or any food that you got that you either didn't eat or regretted when you did? Well, I've got a thing with heights, of course. And when we were in Utah last year, I had my first helicopter ride. I did it.

I didn't. I was really nervous about it because, you know, it was a height thing. It was a motion sickness thing. I wasn't quite sure what that experience was going to be, but I did it. I did say no to a hot air balloon ride because, you know, with my fear of heights, which is quite legitimate, the idea of standing in a basket a thousand feet above the ground was, there was no way around that. I mean, if I'm on a suspension bridge, which I've done reluctantly, but I did it, you know, and I could set my sight, I could set my vision on a target kind of like dead ahead where I'm not necessarily looking down and I'm not looking over.

I'm just looking straight ahead or I'm looking at my feet. Whatever it was, I could actually get by and do it. But standing in a basket, I knew that was not going to be for me. So I said no to that. Food-wise, again, my taste is pretty basic when it comes down to it, basic kind of meat and potatoes. I'm not Michelin. If you're telling me we're going to a Michelin restaurant, you know what I mean? The only foam I want to see is on the ocean. I don't necessarily want to see it on my food. Just give me a plate of good food and make sure it's cooked.

So I've tasted, you know, so I'm not, I don't have an adventurous palate. I tasted haggis in Scotland this past year. That is really a nasty dish. Haggis. I went to Scotland once and noticed that none of the natives were ordering it. Well, I don't really, I mean, there are people who actually love it. I'm sitting not too far from me right now. But I think that, you know, when you're using parts of an animal that you really would never, ever want to see in a dish, it's not a good sign right off the top. I tasted it. I really didn't like it. You've done season two now.

You've shot that. It includes a trip to Scotland where your mother is from. like it. You've done season two now. You've shot that. It includes a trip to Scotland, where your mother is from. Did you learn things about your family that you didn't know there? The amazing thing about Scotland was I wasn't expecting to be feeling what I ended up feeling in Scotland. I knew Scotland was where my mother was born, and yet I never really had a strong desire to go there if I was going to be traveling, you know. And then we got to Glasgow, which is where my mother was from, in a, you know, kind of a poor working class kind of tenement section they called the Gorbals.

And we got to see a replica, it's a museum, a replica of the tenements that were in the Gorbals at that time, at the beginning of the 20th century. And it was really shocking to me because these were little three-room tenements, apartments that, you know, my mother was one of nine brothers and sisters and her parents, and they had a boarder to help make a little money to help see them by. So there were like 12 people basically in three rooms, and one of the rooms was a kitchen. And I don't remember her telling me anything about how small this apartment was that she grew up in. You know, she never really alluded to it. Her stories were just basic stories that any kid would tell about, you know, growing up and going to school,

but never really heard how many people were sleeping in one bed. It kind of, it got to me. It, you know, I felt an emotional tug in that episode that honestly, I guess, surprised me. I wanted to talk about Schitt's Creek, the series that you did that people have seen on Netflix. And again, Schitt is actually a name of a family in this case. It's S-C-H-I-T-T. It's awkward to say, but that is the name. Yeah. So legitimate name. Right. Most of us know it as a series on Netflix. It was originally done for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I mean you are a native Canadian yourself. Yeah.

Filmed up there. You want to just explain the premise of the show? loses its money, and is forced to live in a town they once bought as a joke because the name of the town was Schitt's Creek. So they end up living in a motel because it just doesn't cost them any money. That's really what the premise of the show was. Rich's two rag stories. And I'll play a clip here from very early in the series. I mean, you're Johnny Rose. You had this, it was a chain of video stores, I guess, and then you were defrauded by your financial manager. With you is your wife, Moira, who is played by Catherine O'Hara who you've known for decades and done many roles with.

Your son Dan plays your son in the series, David. And your daughter is played by Annie Murphy who is just terrific in this. I mean – and what you see is that every – all four of you have lived very pampered and self-absorbed lives. So self-absorbed, in fact, that you as parents haven't paid that much attention to the kids who've had plenty to play with being so rich. This comes up in the scene we're going to hear where you've all moved into this rundown motel. Your circumstances are drastically changed and you call a family meeting. Let's listen. Your mother and I have been talking, and we've come to the realization that we've not been very good parents. Sadly, and most of the time, we have no interest in what's going on with you.

We have no idea what's, because she means no idea. We have lost touch as a family, and if we're going to get through this ordeal together we have got to get reacquainted now back at rose video we had management retreats where we would play fun team building we also had company-wide spa days why don't we try that and one of the icebreakers at these retreats was a game that was always a hit. And it was a game where somebody would tell a lie about themselves and then a truth and then another lie. And everybody would have to guess which one was the lie. No, Johnny, they had to guess which one was the truth.

Which one was the lie? It's just one lie. What did I say? You said two lies. Well, it is two lies. No, the game is two truths and a lie. It's true. So you've heard of it. Yeah, because babies play that at their birthday parties.

Okay, whatever. It's a good game. Now, here's how it goes. I'll give you an example. Why don't I start? I'm miserable, drunk, and hate this game. So, here's a hint. Sadly, I'm not drunk. Okay, wrong attitude. And that is our guest,

Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara and Dan Levy. I haven't heard that one in a long time. The writing is really crisp. You and your son Dan did a lot of it. As I understand, he originally came to you with the idea for this. Was it the series then that we came to know or was it something different? The idea he came to me was a wealthy family loses its money and what's it like to be a fly on the wall? So, you know, it was based on, you know, at the time

there were the, you know, shows like the Kardashians or the Osbournes and we were seeing incredible wealth on camera and we were right inside the house dealing with the family. But what if the families we're dealing with lost it all? What would it be like to still be a fly on the wall with these families? And that really was the premise that we started with. And we just, we worked on developing the show. Yeah. I just want to tell the audience, if you've heard of the show, but haven't gotten gotten around to it or maybe tried it and didn't quite catch on, stay with it. It is just hilarious in part because there's just such a terrific supporting cast. Did your son Dan have experience in writing a show like this?

I know he'd worked for MTV in Canada for a long time. He worked for MTV in Canada and he was a host for about seven years and started to get involved writing kind of sketches as the years went on. And his stuff was actually kind of quite funny. When we started, I truly didn't know at that time whether he had – whether he was able to, in his writing ability, even though we were coming up with a show together, to come up with a show, a weekly show where a character-driven show, you know, where, you know, you really want the audience to have an emotional involvement with your characters, that's really, you know, that's the kind of writing that is really tough. And I mean, it's really tough. And he, right out of the gate, showed an amazing talent for it. And once I saw him kind of just going at it, I knew I could kind of step back and just say, okay, boy, he doesn't need any mentoring on this. I think he's way ahead of the old man on this. I read that you thought that your character in this, Johnny Rose, was closer to you, Eugene Levy, than other characters you played. Is that true?

Yeah. You know, I've spent my life as a character actor and, and, and I, you know, I would give me something to put on, give me some glasses, give me a mustache, give me a beard, give me a hat. You know, I, it, it, it really helped if I could totally be somebody else and feel like somebody else, um, I could do the job with the closer a character came to who I was, I just didn't think there was anything that interesting there. So I, it, it, it, you know, I kind of shied away from it. So I knew that Johnny Rose had to be, this is not a sketch character. It had to be a, you know, a three-dimensional character like everybody else in the show. And so I, again, you know, there was more of me in that character. But nevertheless,

it was a character. You know, in the series, the four of you, the parents and the two adult children live in pretty close quarters. I mean, you and Moira are in one room and then the kids are in an adjoining hotel room, both of them with their own single bed. And you did what, was it six seasons? Six seasons. Six seasons. I'm old enough to have kids in their 30s. And I have to say, it is just so nice to have an adult relationship with people that you share this family history with, but who are now adults that I actually like, and I really enjoy getting together with them. I was just thinking it must have been a really gratifying experience for you to work with your son, Dan, and your daughter,

Sarah, who plays the waitress, Twyla. Yeah. Well, it's pretty amazing that both Daniel and Sarah kind of ended up in this business. I don't think I ever got over the fact when I was in a scene with them or watching them work with somebody else, Catherine or Chris Elliott, how good they were in the show and how proud I was watching them. And I would be on camera in a scene with them. And in my mind, I'm thinking, wow, I can't believe I'm actually working with my kids on camera. This is what's going through my head as I'm in the middle of a scene. So it was a it was a unbelievable experience. You know, not a lot of dads get a chance to do that. Well, you're lucky, you know, because there's another kind of piece of advice that people give, which is never go into business with your relatives because you don't know what's going to happen. And, you know, sometimes when you're making TV and film, you know, it can be intense. There are budgets and schedules and studio executives.

And, you know, it can be difficult well you know that was the initial the the my my my initial nightmare when i started working on this thing with daniel was you know thinking what if he doesn't have it uh you know we're starting to write and put together this show, and I'm thinking, what if he just can't do it? What am I going to do? Do I tell him? At some point, do I sit him down saying, son, you know what? This is not really going to work. Or do I not say anything and just spend time working on this thing that I know probably will never get off the ground.

You know, it was a real kind of Sophie's Choice thing for me. So I – but fortunately, he came through with Flying Colors. We're going to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We're speaking with Eugene Levy. He stars in the Apple TV Plus series The Reluctant Traveler. Season 2 premiered last Friday, March 8th, and new episodes drop on Fridays. He'll be back to talk more about his career after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air.

Hi there, it's Tanya Mosley, here to share more about my new series of Fresh Air Plus bonus episodes. I love when he casts his mom in movies. It feels so authentic. I know. You know, she was also in the film Goodfellas, which I also love. I need to get that screenplay, by the way. I don't have that one. For the next few weeks leading up to the Academy Awards, I'll be talking about all of my favorite movies with my colleague Anne-Marie Baldonado. If you want to hear what movies I love and which screenplays I actually own and use as creative direction, sign up his characters on SCTV, appearances in more than 60 films, including the American Pie series and the hit comedy show Schitt's Creek. That's S-C-H-I-T-T-S, Creek, about a wealthy family who lose their fortune and have to live humble lives. He's now starring in the travel show The Reluctant Traveler. It premiered its second

season last Friday on Apple TV+. New episodes drop on Fridays. You grew up in a steel town about 40 miles from Toronto, right? You're Canadian. Your dad was a foreman in an auto plant. Your mom a homemaker, as I understand it. Did you have any idea when you were young how you might earn a living? Did you expect to see a blue-collar world? I didn't really know. I know my dad always stressed an education so that you could go into a profession. And that was drilled into us. And my brother kind of followed that to a T, and I didn't. I discovered, I guess, when I got to university, I went to McMaster University in Hamilton.

A lot of good people went there, actually. Marty, my good friend Marty Short, and the late Ivan Reitman, and the late Danny Goldberg. We were all at Mac together, and I didn't really – I got into acting at McMaster and just started cutting classes. I was so excited about the people I was hanging out with and making films and acting in plays that the idea of going to class, I found it boring and I thought, well, why go? So I ended up quitting. You know, I had to leave school and ended up, fortunately, with a job in one of – in Ivan Reitman's first feature. And I was kind of on the – behind the cameras, not in front of the cameras. And that's literally how I got into this line of work.

Well, you were serving coffee, right? I mean, you were way behind the cameras. I was, yes. I was the coffee boy on the film. But back in Hamilton in the 1960s, nobody went into the entertainment business. So as much as I loved acting back then, I never thought, well, this is something I should do. It just was kind of, once I left school, I thought, well, you got to leave acting behind and think about what you want to do for a living. Luckily, there was a position on Ivan's movie that he gave me. And he's the one that gave me my first chance in front of the camera. And then, you know, one thing just led to another. You got involved with Toronto's Second City, the comedy troupe.

And you developed a lot of really, you know, funny characters. I mean, you and John Candy were the Schmenge brothers who hosted the live polka show. Yeah. You were Bobby Bittman, this Vegas comic. Actually, you and I spoke, gosh, on this program. 2005, we played some of those. Wow. You really honed a lot of skills doing that. Was it writing?

Was it performing? Was it both? Well, it was good character work, which is what I love doing, because anything except playing me was kind of fun. We poured ourselves into the work on SCTV, you know, and it was a case truly where the inmates were running the asylum. And I think that's why the show was as good as it was. We had a kind of a producing team that knew enough to, you know, let us do it. We worked in Toronto and then we worked in Edmonton, you know, unlike, you know, Saturday Night Live, those, Night Live, those kids, that was certainly a great show. And the reason we got our show, SCTV, well, look what's happening with SNL. All the Second City people are going into SNL.

We should have another show where Second City people can get in front of the camera and do their thing. And so SCTV was created one year later. Yeah. I mean you built a career in TV and then got into film, did a whole bunch of films. And, you know, as you started to raise a family,

you know, you could have moved to Hollywood. You didn't, right? You stayed in Toronto. Was that a conscious decision maybe to shelter your kids from a Hollywood lifestyle? That was exactly the reason. It was to,

we didn't think it was going to be the healthiest thing in the world if our kids grew up inside a kind of show business community. So we moved back to Toronto and, you know, the idea was, well, Toronto is kind of a normal city. You will grow up with a lot of different influences that might kind of lead you in a direction to a profession. And it was also just a great town for kids to grow up in, you know, had a great transit system, subways, very safe, you know, kids could start getting around town, you know, at the age of 12, 13, 14 on their own through the subway system. That wouldn't happen in Los Angeles. And, um, so that's, that's what we did. And of course, the biggest irony of ironies, they both end up in LA, right?

They both end up in, in, both end up in show business. I think our decision was still the right decision. I've interviewed a lot of actors here, and it's interesting to me when I find some that told me that there were times, and these are really established, famous people to me, times when the phone wouldn't ring for long stretches. I mean, Frank Langella once told me he couldn't even get an agent for a while. Did you have any slumps in your career like that? Well, I had a stretch in Toronto where I I rented an office and thought, well, maybe I'm going to have to come up with a script or I'm going to have to come up with something to create some work because the phone wasn't ringing. So I'd go into my office every day.

I'd get my coffee. I'd come in. You know, I would stare at my laptop, my computer, and not much going on there. So I'd kind of stare out the window, and it got to a point where I would look at the office building across the road and see people kind of moving in and out of offices and thinking, boy, everybody in there is getting paid at the end of the week. That's for sure. And I'd look at the bike courier who was like pulling up, delivering packages out front, and I'm thinking, well, at least this guy's, you know, getting paid at the end of the week. I'm not getting, there's no money coming in for me here. I'm just, you know, if I don't come up with something, you know, I'm dead in the water here. So there was some months that went on there where I thought, boy, I could be in serious trouble here.

Last question. Might there be a Schitt's Creek movie? Well, you know, we've never said no to another project, that's for sure. But as my son Daniel, you know, has said, you know, we, you know, the first thing is coming up with an idea that's as good or better than where we left the show off. And when that happens, there's a possibility that anything could happen in terms of a reunion. But I can't say we're terribly close to that right now, but we would never rule it out. Well, good luck. Eugene Levy, it's been fun. Thanks so much for speaking with us. Thank you, Dave. Eugene Levy stars in the Apple TV Plus series, The Reluctant Traveler. Season two premiered last week and new episodes drop on Fridays. Let's end with a clip of Eugene

Levy and Christopher Guest's 2006 movie, For Your Consideration. Levy has appeared in a number of guest satirical comedies. This one is a movie about a movie being made, and some of the actors are receiving buzz around Hollywood. One of the actors is Victor Allen Miller, who's played by Harry Shearer. Eugene Levy plays his agent Morley Orfkin. In this scene, the agent sees his client on the studio lot and calls out to him. Vinker! Vinker! Hey! Hey, Morley! Yeah? Morley, what the hell are you doing here? What am I doing here? Oh, you wanted to have a meeting? Yes. Yesterday. We had a meeting scheduled for yesterday. You didn't show. Yesterday? No, no, no, no, no. What the hell are you talking? No, I was in the office all day. Why didn't you call me?

I called you. You didn't return my message. Well, you got a minute now? No, I have to go to the stage. Was it important? What did you want to talk about? A lot of things, but look. I'm working for scale.

An actor of my stature, 40 years in the business, there's no excuse for me working for scale. No, and that's exactly what I've been telling people. You should not be working for scale. Good. Okay? But you know these producers, they have their own take on things. Victor, I'm on your side.

All right? I'm your agent. You are my number one priority. There is nothing more important to me in my life than you. Excuse me. Yeah? Stranger, what do you say? Nothing important. I'm here with a client i gotta go hang on uh good

because i gotta take this victor look uh uh stop by the office anytime you know we moved eugene levy in a scene from the christopher guest movie for your consideration coming up maureen corrigan reviews help wanted the new novel from ad Adele Waldman set in a big box store in the Catskill region of New York. This is Fresh Air. In her 2013 debut novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adele Waldman wrote about love and narcissism among literary hipsters in Brooklyn. Waldman's long-awaited second novel, Help Wanted, is set in another world entirely, a big-box store in a depressed town in the Catskill region of New York State. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review. There's a moment towards the end of Adele

Waldman's new novel, Help Wanted, where a smart but insecure young woman named Nicole, who's a worker in a big box store, approaches her manager to ask him what he thinks about her ambition to go to college. The manager, nicknamed Big Will, is a good guy, but he's distracted. He's just been promoted and reassigned to another store. As Nicole sits down in Big Will's office, she notices a photo of a bunch of guys at what must have been Big Will's own college graduation. We're told that they looked preppy and confident, like the rich kids from high school. Nicole remembered how she'd felt

in high school. She thought of the time in social studies class she'd referred to people in Mexico as speaking Mexican. She could still hear the laughter. What if, when Big Will said she was smart, he didn't mean that kind of smart, college smart like his friends? Nicole got up, told Big Will it was nothing, and quickly left his office. A really good writer, like Waldman, knows when to let a moment speak for itself. By the end of that brief scene, we readers sense Nicole's aspirations have deflated, maybe for good. Waldman's debut novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., about a young literary hipster living where else in Brooklyn, was lauded for its wit and shrewdness. It's been a long wait

for Waldman's second novel, which turns out to be not what I was expecting. Help Wanted is a workplace ensemble piece set in a Costco-like store in a Catskill region town. It's a place that was first hollowed out by malls and now by e-commerce and the disappearance of corporate office parks. Waldman has said in interviews that she herself took a job in a big box store for six months. Her motives seem to have been mixed, part anthropological, part practical. The income generated from her debut novel was beginning to dry up. Help Wanted itself is a mixed bag. As you perhaps heard in that passage I just quoted, it's graced with the psychological acuity that distinguished its predecessor. But because Help Wanted is a group portrait, it tends to visit rather than settle in with its working class characters. effect is both panoramic and jumpy, not unlike the novel's opening scene, in which the team members

of movement, corporate speak for the crew that gathers every morning at 4 a.m. to meet delivery trucks, frantically unload boxes of stuff, kitty litter, shrink-wrapped lampshades, sunscreen, bound tiki torches, toilet paper, and single-serve styrofoam cups of soup. The novel's plot is in a sense also a collective effort. No, nobody's talking union. Instead, given that Big Will, the current store manager, is moving on up. The workers hatch a plan to rid themselves of their own reviled division manager, a woman named Meredith. By singing her praises to corporate, they hope to get her promoted, albeit undeservedly. Waldman clearly relishes bringing mercurial Meredith to life. Here she is approaching Nicole on that early morning unloading line. Hi, love, Meredith said.

How are you? Nicole gave Meredith the smallest, coldest smile she could get away with, then turned to a large box, a mini fridge, rolling toward her. It had only traveled a few inches when Meredith bent forward and gave it a big theatrical shove. Boom chicka boom, she called gaily. She turned to Nicole. See, she said, a little energy is all it takes. She snapped her fingers twice, right up in Nicole's face. If the love affairs of Nathaniel P. was a droll depiction of the insider culture of literary Brooklyn, Help Wanted is an informed depiction of outsiders, hourly wage workers, mostly without benefits, who see themselves shut out of the American dream. If there's not as much witty banter in this novel, well, how could there be? Maureen Corrigan is a professor of

literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Help Wanted by Adele Waldman. Thank you. Music Music Coming up, David Bianculli reviews Manhunt, a new series from Apple TV Plus about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the hunt for his killer. This is Fresh Air. On Friday, Apple TV Plus presents the first two episodes of a new seven-part historical miniseries. It's called Manhunt, and it dramatizes the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the 12-day hunt for his killer, John Wilkes Booth. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, five days after the end of the Civil War in April 1865, has inspired filmmakers for more than a century.

And that's not an exaggeration. In 1915, almost 110 years ago, director D.W. Griffith released Birth of a Nation. That was his epic silent movie that recreated in careful detail the shooting of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre. Other portions of that film were less careful and a lot more odious. Griffith presented the Ku Klux Klan as heroes and gloried in cartoonish racist stereotypes. A century later, in 2012, another influential filmmaker,

Steven Spielberg, cast Daniel Day-Lewis in his impressive historical movie called Lincoln, but Spielberg intentionally avoided restaging the assassination itself. In between those two movie milestones have been many, many artistic examinations of Lincoln's life and death, from films and television to the theater. One stage musical, 1990's Assassins, by John Weidman and Stephen Sondheim, is in my opinion the best take on the subject ever produced, and still is vital and thought-provoking whenever it's revived, which is often. But now comes Manhunt, a seven-part Apple TV Plus miniseries created by Monica Baletsky. She was a writer on season three of TV's Fargo, the season where Ewan McGregor played a dual role, so she's got some instant cred. And she's

working from a well-received source material, James L. Swanson's Edgar Award-winning 2007 book, Manhunt, the 12-day chase for Lincoln's killer. As the story is presented in this new production, it's almost like a period piece Columbo. We see the criminal, in this case Anthony Boyle as John Wilkes Booth, plan and commit the murder. Then we see the lead investigator, in this case Tobias Menzies as Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, pursuing leads and deciphering clues to catch the elusive killer. Scenes set before the assassination make clear the tensions around the country as the Civil War came to an end. Secretary of State William Seward got the news, delivered by Stanton himself, that Confederate General Robert E. Lee had just surrendered.

This was five days before Lincoln's assassination. Larry Pine plays Seward, and his warning, after Menzies' Stanton delivers the good news, is not only so prescient about what was about to happen, but is pointedly resonant today. Lee's army was without a white flag, so they surrendered to us with a dish towel. I'll draft a press release for the international community. But we should refrain from claiming a conclusive blow until every major general knows the fight is over and their side has accepted it. The press already know. I've ordered cannon fire, illumination.

Everyone is ready to celebrate, Bill. Lee surrendered. Lee and his followers can be extremists. Well, celebrate. We'll celebrate. We won the damn thing, hmm? I'll celebrate when they show us no more bloodshed. Another early scene in Manhunt presents Booth's plan to assassinate Lincoln as at least partly based in coincidence.

Booth, played by Anthony Boyle, is drinking at a bar adjacent to Ford's Theater, where our American cousin is playing. Portraits of Booth's father and brother, who, like him, are stage actors, hang on the barroom wall. And a fellow patron, who recognizes John Wilkes Booth, sits next to him at the bar and strikes up a conversation. Booth doesn't know the man, but soon learns a few facts that shape Booth's murderous plans. You won't mind me saying, I think you'd be much more famous like your brother or your pa if you played the heroes. Why don't you? You know, tomorrow, I'm going to be more famous than anyone in my family.

Yeah? I'm going to be the most famous man in the whole world. Really? What show are you in? Our American Cousin. Well, I ain't seen you on stage. I haven't made my entrance yet. Manhunt is one review where I don't have to worry much about spoiler alerts. Abraham Lincoln dies early in the first episode,

and John Wilkes Booth gets caught near the end of the last one. It's the in-between part that seems less familiar and that drew me in. There are a lot of things here that may be new to many viewers, from the depth of the many conspiracy theories to the clues leading investigators to Booth's eventual hiding place. But as with all historical dramas of this type, you can't presume that everything presented is fact. Also, some segments of the story are staged either with too much clumsy exposition

or with moments of jarring anachronisms. When Patton Oswalt, as a detective rounding up his squad, tells them, if you see something, say something, it just feels wrong. But enough of Manhunt feels right, from the narrative itself to Lily Taylor's appearance as Mary Todd Lincoln, to justify the time spent watching it. David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed Manhunt on Apple TV+.

On tomorrow's show, we talk with Peter Pomerantsev, who argues that fact-checking doesn't stand a chance against effective propaganda. His new book is about a man he describes as the forgotten genius of propaganda. Pomerantsev co-founded a project recording Russian atrocities in Ukraine to combat Russian disinformation. I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salet, Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman,

Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelly, and Susan Yakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies. Johnny Booth was a handsome devil. Got up in his rings and fancy silks. Had him a temper but kept it level. Everybody called him Wilkes. Why did you do it, Johnny? Nobody agrees. You who had everything, what made you bring a nation to its knees?

Some say it was your voice had gone. Some say it was booze. They say you killed a country, John, because of bad reviews. Johnny lived with a grace and glitter, kind of like the lives he lived on stage. Died in a barn in pain and bitter, 27 years of age.

Why did you do it, Johnny? Throw it all away. Why did you do it, boy? Not just destroy the pride and joy of Illinois, but all the USA. Your brother made you jealous, John. You couldn't fill his shoes. Was that the reason? Tell us, John, along with bad reviews.